“Juden?” the SS man asked, watching the passengers descend to the platform, dragging their things, herding exhausted children before them.
“Nein,” the departing guard smirked. “Ost. Arbeitslager.”
Filip asked himself, Why did they laugh? Ost. East, that’s where they had come from, of course. But Arbeitslager? Work camp? He had seen Ksenia’s letters of introduction. They contained no mention of labor camps. The train must be making other stops along the way, if that’s where some of these people were going. And where is our train? How can we leave with these cattle cars blocking the tracks?
“Filip, look.” Galina tugged at his sleeve. “Those cars are full of people.”
“No,” he said, handing the guard his papers for inspection. “You must be mistaken. They are…”
He turned to look, and blanched. Those were not animal sounds coming from inside the windowless cars. They were words. “Water. Please, water.” He stared in disbelief at fingers protruding between the slats, watched a policeman walk along the length of one wagon, crushing those fingers with his baton, to the amusement of the others.
“Stop!” Galina cried out.
Ksenia took her arm, saying, “Hush. You can’t help them.” Together, all four moved to the side of the platform, to the area designated for waiting.
“Where’s this lot from?” one of the officers asked another, pointing at the crowded cattle cars with his chin.
“Prague. Four days ago.”
“All right.” The first one nodded. He unfurled the station’s water hose, pointing the nozzle at the air space near the roof of the car. “Turn it on.”
What followed, the wailing and keening fueled by panic but also by a desperate need for relief, was unlike the sound of any human voice Galina or Filip had ever heard. The captive bodies strained against the creaking sides of the wagon for what, in spite of the force of the flow, could not have been more than a few drops of water. After a few minutes, the first officer signaled to shut the hose off. “That’s enough. They’re only Jews,” he said.
“There are children in there. Can’t you hear them crying?” Galina whispered, tears running down her own face. Filip set down his suitcase and embraced her, holding her head firmly against his shoulder until she stopped sobbing.
Shuddering, she worked herself free of him, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. They watched the officer move along the tracks to an empty freight car. He raised his arm and, with theatrical flair, chalked the word OST in large capital letters on the side.
“Now you,” he shouted at the Russians. “Ostarbeiter. In here.” He angled a narrow board against the open freight car doors and shoved the first of the group up the makeshift ramp. Two policemen formed the rest of the travelers into a ragged line, snorting impatiently while the people struggled to keep their balance and hold on to their possessions. At the foot of the ramp, the SS man handed each traveler a square patch and a large safety pin. “Wear these on your coats at all times,” he commanded. “Sew them on when you reach your destination.”
Filip looked down at the roughly woven patch in his hand. OST, it read, black letters on a whitish ground. “Where are we going?” he asked aloud, of no one. No one answered.
3
ONCE LOADED, THE TRAIN traveled fast, speeding through Austria without incident. The wagon smelled of stale sweat and urine, but it was not especially crowded. Everyone found a spot, sitting on their trunks and cases; some stretched out on the grimy straw-covered floor and slept.
“I wish we could see out,” Galina sighed, leaning her head against the wall, rocking with the motion of the train.
“I wish I had a cigarette.” Filip closed his eyes. He had tried peering between the slats at the flickering landscape but gave up, feeling dizzy with the effort.
“Hmm,” Ilya grunted, without clarifying which desire he shared. Perhaps both.
Sometime in the night, the train stopped, jolting the sleepers awake with a great screeching of wheels on metal tracks. It had grown colder. The car doors opened to let in more people, speaking other languages—Serbian, Czech, others Filip did not recognize—but with the same dazed look as the Russian travelers, the same scruffy luggage and OST patches on their coats.
“What day is it?” someone asked.
“November first if it’s after midnight. Tuesday.”
People shifted about, making room for the new occupants. Galina and her mother found themselves pushed to the car’s open door. “Mama,” Galina breathed. “Snow.”
It fell gently. Huge flakes floated on the air as if chipped from a block of soap; they filled every crevice, covered each surface with a lacy, ever-changing pattern until all the spaces disappeared and everything dazzled against the dark.
What was it Maksim had said? Cold and wet. You’d tire of it in a week. The words rang clearly in her head, as if her brother had just spoken them. She could hear the disdain in his voice, see his hand pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Rest in peace, she thought. But you were wrong. Who could tire of such beauty?
“Step back,” a gruff voice commanded. The door slammed shut, a heavy bolt thudded into place. Galina closed her eyes to the murk, the ceaseless sighing and swaying of the human cargo, holding the image of pristine whiteness against her eyelids, until, still standing, she fell asleep.
A convoy of open trucks took them from the station to the outskirts of Munich, speeding through the city at sunrise. Filip admired the architecture, shocked by the signs of wanton destruction; he spotted the towering steeple of a Baroque church, a flock of birds rising through the gaping hole in its roof, the surrounding area reduced to rubble.
In the side streets, he glimpsed narrow passageways lined with squat two-story houses, small windows and painted doors, every roof covered with red tiles, wisps of translucent chimney smoke hinting at breakfast. Even with so much damage caused by enemy bombing, it was a medieval fairy-tale city, and he wished he could step in, even for a little while, and sample its daily routines, mingle with its residents. “Why are we at war with these people? What do we want from each other?” He said it under his breath, but Ilya, standing at his side, heard.
“If I were a younger man, I would be fighting them. But my lungs—” he stopped, his chest heaving in painful spasms of dry coughing.
“Don’t let them hear you,” Ksenia cautioned.
“What? Saying I would defend my home? There’s no shame in that.”
“No. Don’t let them hear you cough.”
“It’s only the cold air.” Ilya waved a dismissive hand.
They all knew it wasn’t the cold air, that he had defended his country as a younger man, in the Great War, against this very enemy, that he’d soldiered through clouds of mustard gas that left him, along with thousands of other survivors, permanently, incurably impaired. “At least, you should not smoke,” Ksenia persisted.
“Ai, Mama. Would you deny me every joy?”
Leaving the city behind, they watched the Bavarian countryside roll out: a cluster of painted cottages here, followed by a pine thicket, the cantilevered branches dusted with early snow. Then fields, farmhouses of stone and timber, barns, outbuildings. There was less bomb damage here; perhaps the area had fewer strategic targets.
They sped past an old man in a green cap leading an old horse pulling an even older wagon, saw him move to the side of the road to let the trucks pass. In the distance, stooped figures of women dotted the fields, digging the last of the year’s potatoes. Will there be enough farm work for us, Ksenia wondered, with winter coming?